Migration, Wages and Unemployment in Thailand

Abstract

Migrants from Myanmar to Thailand have increased rapidly during thelast decade. The impact of immigration on labor market outcome has becomea concern for native workers and policy makers. This paper provides newevidence on the impact of immigration on native wages and unemploymentrates, using geographic approach. Our estimation suggests no significantimpact of immigration on native wages. However, we find that immigrationhas a substantial adverse effect on natives’ unemployment. The estimatesindicate that a 1-percent increase in the migrant-to-native ratio of a provincein 2001 raises the natives’ unemployment rate about 0.5 percent in 2005.Moreover, we find that the workers who are most affected by the immigrationare the unskilled, the young and the agricultural workers. The result thatimmigration affects only unemployment rates but does not affect wagesimplies that the Thai labor supply is flat.